


Alone in a Crowd

by OceanCandy (PaddlingDingo), PaddlingDingo



Series: The Spaces In Between [3]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24291130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaddlingDingo/pseuds/OceanCandy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaddlingDingo/pseuds/PaddlingDingo
Summary: Charlton copes with his mild agoraphobia by revisiting his own happy place, and the memories he’s kept safe within it.
Relationships: Charlton & Eliot Waugh
Series: The Spaces In Between [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1746043
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Alone in a Crowd

There were days that Charlton hated being alone, and there were days he couldn’t stand to be anything else. Areas that were too widespread or felt too open, they brought him a sense of dread, a feeling that he’d lost control. The space he’d stayed in, inside his own mind for so long, was full of only his memories. A small, mostly white room with no windows, sparsely furnished.

It hadn’t been a place he’d known in life. It was a place carefully constructed to keep him safe, intentionally crafted to ensure he wouldn’t risk the Monster’s wrath. He only ventured out of that room if he absolutely had to, such as to try to find the door to try to regain control.

Large spaces now made him nervous. The space outside of the Physical Kids’ Cottage was the easiest to tackle at first, because when he’d been there in Eliot’s memories, they’d had the Monster as the greater threat. He thought that would make it harder at first, but the reality is that the space felt benign after they’d navigated it through such extreme circumstances. Those were the early places he moved through, making his ways to the trees. There he nestled himself between two tree roots, his hands running over the intricate texture of the bark.

Tree bark felt the same here as it did in Fillory, given some allowance for the fact that everything felt just a little different in Hyman’s body. For everything that smelled, looked, and moved differently, trees weren’t one of them. Trees were a constant, although he’d read that the trees here didn’t have a connection to each other like those in Fillory. That thought made him sad, that each one of these trees was alone, completely separate from the trees next to them. 

As he gained confidence, he moved into other spaces, finally finding himself sitting on the grass on the Green. Here, where to many students gathered to practice, no one noticed one person on their own with a book in his lap. Others sat around doing the same, alone even in the middle of others. He was alone, but he was not by himself.

The open spaces still took some practice to inhabit. He looked up, an expanse of blue sky and clouds that he’d never thought he’d see again. It wasn’t his sky or his clouds, but someday, maybe it could be. Or, maybe he’d find his way to new Fillory, to lay in a field of wildflowers under that sky, with the moons above Not seeing two moons unnerved him; how could that one far away moon possibly be enough? 

But Earth got by on it, and so he would get used to it. It hung in the blue sky, a slivered crescent.

Faced with so much sky, space, he could feel his heart rate picking up. Maybe he’d been out here too long. He laid back on the grass, closing his eyes, his hands resting on top of the book he’d been reading. He pulled himself back into that space, the one he’d hid in. The walls built themselves around him, the small white room that he’d stored his life in. He’d held those pieces of himself hidden away and safe, many of his memories visualized in the form of books. 

He’d put them away in his mind, in order to not face what he’d lost until he had the fortitude to do so. A bookshelf in his mind, overflowing with the parts of himself he’d put away. Now he lay on the cot in that room, dressed as he’d always been. If he stayed the same, in this space, he wouldn’t have the sense of how much time he’d spent there. Every day could be the same, and maybe that was fine. Maybe the years passed through his fingers like water, like dust, like sand. 

He’d tried to revisit so many of his own memories, but found them tangled up in Eliot’s. Now alone, he reached for one of those memories, pulling it to him. His family. 

Of course he thought of them, but only in small, safe pieces. 

In his mind, he opened the book, ready to revisit the memories. He’d buried so many of them, unable to face what he’d lost, what he missed. He’d revisited them when he could, when he felt safe enough, but he’d locked so much of his own life away just to survive. 

He could have found some help to do this, to pull these memories out, but he didn’t know how to ask for help. He never had. And that’s what had brought him to this point in time. He wanted to tell Eliot, to explain to him that he still struggled with being displaced from what little remained of the live he’d known. Not fitting in had taught him his own ways of internalizing issues. 

He let the memories of his family wash over him. He’d thought it would hurt, but he found himself smiling. He’d long since come to terms with losing them, with never seeing them again. His mother a midwife, her flaxen hair glowing in the sun. His father kneeling beside an intricate carved scroll on the arm of a chair, painstakingly smoothing out the design. A carpenter that built the most beautiful chairs that Charlton had ever seen. His older sister, her constant acceptance of his quirks, with her son and daughter in tow. His younger brother, whom he never saw eye to eye with. And his youngest sister, so young that she’d still been entertained by his illusions along with his niece and nephew. His mother had his oldest sister young so for all he knew, there had been more siblings. He’d possibly never know. 

The times he’d helped his mother when she was working, usually by helping keep children distracted. Other times by bringing her what she needed for a difficult birth. Or when he’d helped his father in the family shop. He didn’t have the talent for woodworking like his father or his older sister, but he’d had an eye for a perfect piece of work for a project. 

These tiny moments spilled out like marbles in his head, and he picked each one up and looked at it, letting them become part of his mind again. 

He relaxed, the grass tickling at his hands as he ran his fingers through it. The voices around him started to come back to him and he opened his eyes, staring up at the blue sky again. 

“You choose the worst places to nap.”

Charlton turned his head to see Eliot sitting next to him, leaning back with his hands on the grass. In the air between them, a long blade of grass tied itself in knots. 

“I’m not napping.” Charlton sighed and sat up, facing Eliot. “I don’t do well with open spaces but I’m working on it. I went back to my happy place to revisit some old memories. It helps sometimes.”

Eliot winced. “That doesn’t sound like something for a happy place.”

Reaching up, Charlton plucked the knotted grass out of the air. “They were good memories, about my family.” He felt along the grass, at the precisely spaced knots in it. 

“The family that loved you.” Eliot shifted his position, stretching out his long legs. “You can tell me to mind my own business, but if you want to talk about them…” Eliot trailed off, then sighed.

Eliot had seemed restless, caught somewhere in the space between being offered a teaching position at Brakebills and actually starting to teach. “I’d love to talk about them with someone,” Charlton admitted. He paused, thinking about it. He didn’t want to make Eliot sad by telling him so many happy memories, but he also knew that Eliot wouldn’t ask if he didn’t mean it. “Is this your way of saying that you’d like to know more about me, since I know so much about you?”

Eliot reached over and tapped Charlton on the knee. “Don’t overanalyze it.” Eliot plucked a few blades of grass and started braiding them together. “But, yes. You know endless mortifying things about me. I’d like to know something more about you.”

Charlton nodded, also picking up three blades of grass. Instead of braiding them like Eliot did, he did it with his hands. Like he used to do to his sister’s hair.

“I used to braid my sister’s hair,” he started. Then he shared with Eliot some memories of the family that he’d left behind so long ago. 


End file.
